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African American religious leaders in Kansas are speaking out against the state’s new voter-ID law that has suspended the voting rights of 19,000 Kansans. In response, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach — the driving force behind Kansas’ law and similar measures across the country — is accusing them of representing “churches in quotation marks.”

A group of African American church leaders, primarily from the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, denounced Kansas’ voter ID law in June as an effort to “turn back the clock on our rights.”

When an interviewer from the Topeka radio station WIBW asked Kobach about religious opposition to his plan yesterday, Kobach responded, “Kansans overwhelmingly approve it. I don’t know which churches — and I would put churches in quotation marks, because the vast majority of church leaders that I’ve spoken to are fully in favor of our photo ID law.”

He added that he found it “ridiculous to argue that a voter ID is a burden on the right to vote” because “everybody’s got one.” He added that the opposition to his law is “so funny to me.”